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Tuesday, January 1, 2019

New Years Resolutions 2019

2018 turned out to be a year of very only occasional blogging! You know when you are so busy, you don't even have time to tell people about how busy you are? That's what 2018 was. My library is undergoing renovations and I'm currently working in an outreach librarian role, which is something I'd never pictured for myself. It's interesting and challenging! I can't wait until my library is ready to re-open though, as I'm drawing lots of inspiration for new programs to try, new displays to assemble and more in-depth collection development work.

So! New Years Resolutions - how did I do?
Last year I said:

Goals for 2018 include:

Spend less time on social media, pointlessly lurking, clicking and scrolling, and more time actually reading books. Really wondering how much of my To Be Read pile I can knock out!I want to read at least 50 books this year!I'd like to walk three miles a day. This isn't too outrageous of a goal, as I have to walk a lot in my job, so with a bit more effort, I should make three miles a day, easily.

Okay, then! I did give up social media for about 6 months. It was tough at times, but also very freeing. Then, I kind of dipped my toe back in... and now I feel like I'm right back where I was at the end of last year! Scrolling, hitting refresh, scrolling more, wasting time. Well, time to cut back again, I guess.

I read more than 50 books this past year. I've set some high goal numbers in the past and failed to get there. Sometimes, just for fun, I've set the bar quite low (one year, I think I even set my number to a mere 12 books!) This year, I think I'm going to try for 100 books. Challenging, but hopefully doable. I've spent a lot of time reading to keep up with my various book clubs. And often, selecting a book club pick means NOT picking a new title, as those have tons of holds on them anyway. So, there's a certain art to working with what you have and picking an appealing backlist title that was popular enough that we'll have plenty of copies on hand, but at the same time, not so ubiquitous that everyone has absolutely read it already. At any rate, I realized at year's end, when I was asked to contribute some 2018 titles for Staff Picks lists - I'd only read 3 or 4 books published in the current year. So, in 2019, I'm going to make more of an effort to read current titles and to use NetGalley more for pre-pub e-ARCS. I want to trim my TBR list down to 100 items.

My final resolution from last year: walk 3 miles a day. Ouch. Even walking a lot in my job, even going for a walk during lunch, even (some days) walking to work, this was actually a lot tougher to achieve than I thought. If I had to guess, I'd say I only managed to walk 3 miles a day about a third of the time. Still a lot better than nothing! But, it wasn't easily in the bag as I originally imagined. I did lose 10 pounds and keep it off, so that is something!

I have a new resolution in 2019. Bake more. I'll try to bake something once a week, and I've already started with my birthday cake, an orange and vanilla cake recipe that I somewhat improvised.